101–110 of 321 posts
I know millennials with combined household incomes in excess of $200k who can't afford to buy, because huge student loans are required to get that kind of income if mommy and daddy aren't rich in the first place.
I'm behind a paywall, so I'm sure they pick up on this, but the biggest problem I ran into when I thought I could afford a house was the down payment. You can make $100k (or less!) and quite easily afford a monthly mortgage payment, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have enough saved up for a down payment.
Exactly this. Who can manage to save up 20k when they've got massive student loan bills from the education that got them that $100k+ job in the first place?
I am 34 years old working remotely as data scientist, making $107k TC. My wife who I've been married to for 13 years is a stay-at-home mother as we have two children in grade school. Since they are in the school she is turning in our half-acre into a sustainable garden with chickens. We own our home, are financially comfortable while saving $1500 a month, and travel. We were planning a 2-month trip to Japan this upco…
$100k/yr gross household income would make it rough to own a 3/2 single family home in South Florida.
$100,000 still a lot of money. You can buy a beer in Vietnam for 20 cents. The problem in the Bay Area, where I live, is we artificially limit the amount of housing. So prices move to infinity.
Just imagine the house you could build from 500000 Vietnamese beers...
Glass is a pretty good insulator and generally weather-proof, UV-resistant etc, and cheap to produce.
The issue is less about the dollar cost of housing in most places, than the opportunity cost and closing of flexibility in getting into a long term mortgage. In all but the most obnoxiously over-priced areas, if you make $100k, you should be able to buy something on a low down-payment FHA loan, and your total mortgage payment should be less than you'd pay in rent. PMI sucks, but it's not terribly difficult to refinan…
Struggling with rent vs buy right now for this very reason. I know financially it would be better to buy, but then you lose the flexibility to go after a great opportunity in even another part of a major city.
If you aren't in an area with very high housing costs (which, obviously, very many readers of this site are), it's not even that big a deal to sell your house when you need to. If your house constitutes 40% of your net worth, and you take a 5% hit on your sale price, then your net worth has declined... 2%. A good job is worth that.
Admittedly, it's different when your house is 90% of your net worth and you're barely able to afford your mortgage.
The issue is less about the dollar cost of housing in most places, than the opportunity cost and closing of flexibility in getting into a long term mortgage. In all but the most obnoxiously over-priced areas, if you make $100k, you should be able to buy something on a low down-payment FHA loan, and your total mortgage payment should be less than you'd pay in rent. PMI sucks, but it's not terribly difficult to refinan…
Struggling with rent vs buy right now for this very reason. I know financially it would be better to buy, but then you lose the flexibility to go after a great opportunity in even another part of a major city.
If you read the article, they mention "built to rent" houses. I bought one of these, and although I do not rent it out now, I could quite easily rent it out if a better opportunity comes along that would require me to move.
I think this is a good option for people who have the cash for a down payment, are looking for a place to live, and don't want to deal with rising rents in case they do stay, while still increasing net worth every month with the mortgage payment. You might be tied down for a year or two, but it's not like being stuck somewhere for 30 years if you have the option to rent a place out.
I know millennials with combined household incomes in excess of $200k who can't afford to buy, because huge student loans are required to get that kind of income if mommy and daddy aren't rich in the first place.
What's their occupation? You don't need huge student loans to get that kind of salary as a software engineer.
Back when I was picking a college for my CS undergrad, the choice boiled down to (numbers are rough estimates, because I don't remember the exact ones, but they are close enough and should relay the point I am trying to make):
* UCLA out of state: some financial aid for the first year, bringing the costs down to around $25k/yr. Around $35k+ each following year.
* Georgia Tech in state: without financial aid, around $9.5k/yr. With Zell Miller/HOPE scholarship (which every in-state student gets, provided they maintain a certain GPA), it brought down the tuition costs to essentially $0/yr. I still took out some loans for rent/basic necessity expenses, but those were miniscule. Like, less than the first year at UCLA kind of miniscule.
Both are well respected colleges, same program, but wildly different loan situations post-graduation. I obviously choice GT, but not everyone is in the same situation as me. The amount of loans doesn't always correlate with the kind of program you are choosing.
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>It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California. Not if you're a contractor without a full-time employer. In college I did freelance work, and I lost nearly 30% to taxes despite making less than $5k a year from my work. Having your social security responsibility doubled is brutal.
I'm not familiar with how freelancing income is different than other forms of income...isn't that just a regular 1099? Are you saying you didn't receive a tax refund during tax season?
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Just imagine the house you could build from 500000 Vietnamese beers...
Heineken actually, briefly, ran an experiment where they made the bottles more rectangular, so that they could be filled with earth and then cemented together as glass bricks: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-heineken-bo... Glass is a pretty good insulator and generally weather-proof, UV-resistant etc, and cheap to produce.
It's kind of neat if you're ever in the area.
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Problem is a lot of companies get smart and "pay by location". I've seen big cos from the Bay offering half the salary (before currency exchange) for workers in Vancouver.
The trick is usually to get a job locally in SF, do well for a couple years, and then ask to work remote.